Can anyone tell me the easiest way to get Preamp Vendor and Preamp Revision information from a WD hard drive w/ MRTLAB? I have been searching online and come up with absolutely nothing. I'm trying to list this info with donor drives, but finding it difficult.

Yeah, that I don't know. I've often wished that Ace would go public with where PC3K is pulling the info from, since the utility can only read it if the drive actually IDs. Would be really nice to know how to extract this from the SA.

Yeah, that I don't know. I've often wished that Ace would go public with where PC3K is pulling the info from, since the utility can only read it if the drive actually IDs. Would be really nice to know how to extract this from the SA.

I suspect that the "drive table" is assembled on-the-fly, much like the Identify Device data block. Many (all?) of the code modules in the ROM appear to be compressed, so perhaps that's where the version numbers come from. I suspect that the MCU/Channel/Preamp/Power Controller IDs are obtained by reading the peripheral registers.

Yeah, that makes sense. I know in the past I've tried searching through various modules (including 02 where it'd make sense to be) hoping to find the preamp vendor/rev in hex, but I've never been able to find it in any consistent location in any module.

Compression would explain why it sometimes seems like I can find a preamp version in there (by comparing what PC-3000 actually reads from working drive) but sometimes it's not there at all.

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of writing module 02 from a different preamp drive to a working drive and see how it reads out then. That'd at least confirm if the value is, in fact, being read from that module.

If that works, then it means you could at least transfer the module to a working same model/family drive and check it before doing a head swap.

Wow. Your work on this is really impressive. I'm looking at this from a complete beginner, but I'm trying to figure out how you figured out the groups, bytes, records 'rosetta stone'... nicely done.

For me, I'm just trying to get a hold of hex in general. Aside from editing executables two decades ago to put my own name in games like leisure suit larry and things, I have zero experience. Approaching it from a more useful angle today. It looks quite difficult, but I think once I spend enough time with this I'll get the hang of it. It's intimidating at the moment, though.

I tried following along to your C5 tutorial with a Pinclite drive (WD2500AAJS-60Z0A0). The Head DCM and Media Codes are very straight forward, as there is nothing to decode. However, I'm unable to locate any of the other record IDs.

Can you tell me if I'm still hex illiterate or is this just a case where C5 doesn't contain these items in that format?

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